Seeding Football State Tournaments Not A Good Idea
November 28, 2017 at 4:36 p.m.
By Roger Grossman-
A number of high school football coaches in?Indiana are putting together a proposal for a change in the state football tournaments. At the core of the change would be a seeding of the sectional rounds, and for the biggest schools it would based on teams in ‘regional pods,’
The concept is that really talented football teams don’t get very far in the football playoffs because they run into other really talented football teams very early in the bracket.
It’s a little complicated, but let me do my best to help you understand what they want to do with an example. Warsaw is in 6A sectional 2 with Chesterton, Penn and Valpo. Sectional 1 consists of Portage, Lake Central, Merrillville and Crown Point. Under the proposal. The eight teams of that regional “pod” would be lumped into one group of eight, and the top two teams would be determined and put into separate sectionals. The remaining teams would be selected by a blind draw and inserted into sectional brackets.
The goal is to keep the best two teams in a regional ‘pod’ separated until the regional round. What they are trying to do is keep really good teams from being eliminated in the first round of the sectional, which happened in several places this fall.
Classes 5A and 6A would follow that format, while the other four classes would have the top two teams on opposite sides of the sectional bracket, with the other teams inserted by blind draw.
I get what they are doing, but let’s not be fooled by what is really happening here.
This is a move focused on the fact that the 6A football championship game actually had a team from outside the Indianapolis market in it, and it was a blowout again. And let’s be honest, Penn losing 63-14 to Ben Davis should make us all ask the question “if a juggernaut like the Kingsmen can’t compete with the Indy-area schools, how is anyone else supposed to?”
Let’s concede that Indy teams are bigger, faster and better when it comes to football than anywhere else (including Mishawaka). I have a solution: let 6A be only teams from Marion and Allen Counties and the surrounding counties that meet the enrollment guidelines ... Penn, Fort Wayne Snider, Valparaiso, Homestead and all of the other teams that always win every year and that beat everyone 50-3. Let Warsaw and other schools that are big enough to be 6A but are not competitive in the 6A playoffs slip back into 5A where they have a fighting chance.
What is happening is that the “haves” want more at the expense of the “have nots.”
IHSAA Commissioner Bobby Cox had a really interesting reaction when the concept of seeding sectionals in football was presented to him at the state finals over the weekend.
Cox, who I like a lot and have a lot of respect for, said he would not even consider such a proposal until the coaches association includes language that would create a ‘mercy rule’ for football. A mercy rule (like what baseball has when one team is losing by 10 runs or more after the losing team has batted five times) has never been instituted for football in Indiana.
Cox is telling the coaches association, essentially, if you are going to make the worst team in a sectional become cannon fodder for the best team in the sectional, you better come up with a way to end games while preserving the dignity of the losing team.
Didn’t see that coming, did you? Neither did I.
In the regular season, a ‘mercy rule’ is not really a good idea, in my view. The fourth quarter of a game with a wide point spread is still valuable for kids who don’t get to play a lot on Friday nights. Teams with small rosters at smaller schools can, and do, tell officials to keep the clock running as much as possible. It happens all of the time and that is a coach looking out for his kids. I respect that a lot.
But I don’t know if I would be in favor of, for example, saying a game is over at the end of the third quarter because the losing team is too far behind.
And by the way, what will be the standard for that? When would that mercy rule kick in? Assuming that the end of the third quarter would be the line of demarcation, what is that number?
Have you ever watched a team rally from down 28 points to start the fourth quarter? What about 24 or 21? Almost never happens.
So if the score at the end of three quarters is 24-0, is the game over? The losing team has no real chance to come back to win the game, right?
It will be a really interesting conversation.
I hope they get it right.
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A number of high school football coaches in?Indiana are putting together a proposal for a change in the state football tournaments. At the core of the change would be a seeding of the sectional rounds, and for the biggest schools it would based on teams in ‘regional pods,’
The concept is that really talented football teams don’t get very far in the football playoffs because they run into other really talented football teams very early in the bracket.
It’s a little complicated, but let me do my best to help you understand what they want to do with an example. Warsaw is in 6A sectional 2 with Chesterton, Penn and Valpo. Sectional 1 consists of Portage, Lake Central, Merrillville and Crown Point. Under the proposal. The eight teams of that regional “pod” would be lumped into one group of eight, and the top two teams would be determined and put into separate sectionals. The remaining teams would be selected by a blind draw and inserted into sectional brackets.
The goal is to keep the best two teams in a regional ‘pod’ separated until the regional round. What they are trying to do is keep really good teams from being eliminated in the first round of the sectional, which happened in several places this fall.
Classes 5A and 6A would follow that format, while the other four classes would have the top two teams on opposite sides of the sectional bracket, with the other teams inserted by blind draw.
I get what they are doing, but let’s not be fooled by what is really happening here.
This is a move focused on the fact that the 6A football championship game actually had a team from outside the Indianapolis market in it, and it was a blowout again. And let’s be honest, Penn losing 63-14 to Ben Davis should make us all ask the question “if a juggernaut like the Kingsmen can’t compete with the Indy-area schools, how is anyone else supposed to?”
Let’s concede that Indy teams are bigger, faster and better when it comes to football than anywhere else (including Mishawaka). I have a solution: let 6A be only teams from Marion and Allen Counties and the surrounding counties that meet the enrollment guidelines ... Penn, Fort Wayne Snider, Valparaiso, Homestead and all of the other teams that always win every year and that beat everyone 50-3. Let Warsaw and other schools that are big enough to be 6A but are not competitive in the 6A playoffs slip back into 5A where they have a fighting chance.
What is happening is that the “haves” want more at the expense of the “have nots.”
IHSAA Commissioner Bobby Cox had a really interesting reaction when the concept of seeding sectionals in football was presented to him at the state finals over the weekend.
Cox, who I like a lot and have a lot of respect for, said he would not even consider such a proposal until the coaches association includes language that would create a ‘mercy rule’ for football. A mercy rule (like what baseball has when one team is losing by 10 runs or more after the losing team has batted five times) has never been instituted for football in Indiana.
Cox is telling the coaches association, essentially, if you are going to make the worst team in a sectional become cannon fodder for the best team in the sectional, you better come up with a way to end games while preserving the dignity of the losing team.
Didn’t see that coming, did you? Neither did I.
In the regular season, a ‘mercy rule’ is not really a good idea, in my view. The fourth quarter of a game with a wide point spread is still valuable for kids who don’t get to play a lot on Friday nights. Teams with small rosters at smaller schools can, and do, tell officials to keep the clock running as much as possible. It happens all of the time and that is a coach looking out for his kids. I respect that a lot.
But I don’t know if I would be in favor of, for example, saying a game is over at the end of the third quarter because the losing team is too far behind.
And by the way, what will be the standard for that? When would that mercy rule kick in? Assuming that the end of the third quarter would be the line of demarcation, what is that number?
Have you ever watched a team rally from down 28 points to start the fourth quarter? What about 24 or 21? Almost never happens.
So if the score at the end of three quarters is 24-0, is the game over? The losing team has no real chance to come back to win the game, right?
It will be a really interesting conversation.
I hope they get it right.
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